This design has received preliminary approval, marking a significant milestone for the ShipFC H2020 Project. The Norwegian Maritime Authority granted the approval, as announced by the project developers in a social media post on July 4.
The ShipFC project aims to retrofit the offshore vessel Viking Energy, owned and operated by Norwegian company Eidesvik and contracted to energy major Equinor, with a large 2 MW ammonia fuel cell. This retrofit will enable the vessel to operate on clean fuel for up to 3,000 hours annually.
The Viking Energy, described as the world’s first LNG-fueled cargo vessel, was built in 2003 and is equipped with four Wärtsilä dual-fuel engines, allowing it to run on LNG and marine diesel oil. The vessel measures 94.9 meters in length and 20.4 meters in width, with an LNG tank capacity of 220 cubic meters. Recently, Equinor extended its contract with Eidesvik for this platform supply vessel (PSV) by five years.
According to the project consortium, this will be the first installation of an ammonia-powered fuel cell on a vessel. The project received €10 million in funding from the EU’s Research and Innovation program Horizon 2020 under its Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU) in 2020.
The project's goal is to ensure that a large fuel cell can safely and effectively provide total electric power to shipboard systems. A key aspect of the project involves scaling up a 100 KW fuel cell to 2 MW.
Additionally, the ShipFC project will conduct studies on three other vessel types—offshore construction vessels and two cargo vessel types—to demonstrate the potential for transferring this technology to other segments of the shipping industry.
In 2021, Eidesvik signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Norwegian oil company Aker BP and Alma, a venture established by Clara Venture Labs, to explore retrofitting Alma’s ammonia fuel cell technology on two offshore support vessels (OSVs): the Eidesvik-owned Viking Lady and the Aker BP-owned NS Frayja, currently managed by Eidesvik.
